Digital Marketing Budgets increased in 77% of Business Budgets

Investment in digital marketing budgets continues to grow, with 77% of marketers saying their companies intend to increase budgets in 2015.

This is one of the findings of Econsultancy’s Marketing Budgets 2015 Report, published in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Here are a few highlights from the report…

Companies increasing digital marketing budgets

Over three-quarters of marketers surveyed indicate their companies plan to increase their digital marketing budgets for 2015.

This is a significant increase of 8% since last year (and 13% since we first carried out this survey six years ago).

Agencies are even more bullish, with 84% saying their clients will increase their digital budgets over the next 12 months.

The average expected increase in digital budgets has remained remarkably consistent over the last four years, now at 27% (the same percentage as last year).

34% of organisations spend more than half of their marketing budgets on digital. In comparison, there has been a rise in the proportion of companies who are planning to decrease offline budgets.

Last year, 25% said they would be decreasing spending, compared to nearly a third (31%) this year.

Barriers to investment in digital marketing

Over the past six years, the top reason for not investing more has been restricted budgets for all types of marketing.

However, for the first time since 2012, the proportion of respondents citing this as a barrier has declined – from 51% in 2014 to 48% this year.

It’s worth noting that compared to last year, the proportion of respondents citing company culture as a barrier to further investment has decreased by 38% (from 39% to 24%), after being the second most cited reason last year.

However, the proportion of organisations saying that a lack of understanding about digital prevents them from investing more money has increased by 33% year on year.